Home made December



Its almost December, the month of parties, get togethers and presents.
Sinterklaas is just around the corner, Christmas in a few weeks and I recon lots of people will feel the parcel stress creeping up on them.
Why not make some of the presents yourself this year? More personal, attentive, original and often good for your budget.
Have a look at the Martha Stewart website they have a whole section on home made goodies.
Link to the Martha site

And what about making your own decorations?

 Love this Christmas tree!

Click here to go to the tutorial

Getting lippy with it

photo from my portfolio

I love a red lip, or pink, or purple or even brown.
I love how a well chosen lip colour can lift your eyes, give you colour in your face and make you look 'done' without to much effort.
I get asked a lot how I manage to keep my lipstick on all day without smudging it here, there and everywhere. And although it has something to do with careful eating and drinking a big part of staying put is correct application. If you take a little time putting your lippy on it will last you a lot longer. Bare in mind that if a lipstick is glossy it will come off way quicker then when the lipstick is mat.

Have a look at these pictures to create a perfect pout.
I have used a Bobbi Brown lip liner in Red and L'absolu rouge lipstick by Lancome in 134 idole.

1. Apply lipliner, follow the natural shape of your lip. Best is to draw little bits at the time by wiggeling your pencil to the left and right. If you try to draw the line on at once you get a unatural shape.
2. I always use a bit more liner in the corners of your lips. Apply it on your lip as well.
3. Use a lip brush or a cotton bud to blend the lipliner over your lip. Make downwards movements on your top lip and brush the lipliner upwards on your bottom lip. Almost your whole lip, not the plump middle part of bottom lip, is covered in lip liner now.
4. Use your lipstick to press the colour on your lip. Dap your lipstick on almost like how you would apply paint on a stencil.
5. Blot with a tissue, fold a tissue double and bite on it with your lips.
6. With your lip brush apply another layer of lipstick.

Et voila finsihed!

Website of the week

This week the website of the week is a little gem of food and lifestyle: Sweet Paul.
Not only is Sweet Paul a lovely style blog but they also publish a magazine, and its digital edition is free to read, even better!!
Paul Lowe Einlying, aka Sweet Paul, is a 43 year old food and prop stylist who grew up in Oslo but now lives and works in New York. I think you can really see his Norwegian heritage mixed with a bit of New York cool in his work and as I'm a sucker for anything Scandinavian I absolute love this blog/magazine.
According to Paul Lowe his readers say Sweet Paul is like if Anthropologie made Martha Stewart Living magazine.. only two of my favourite things!!
Sweet Paul is a magazine that is like nothing else out there, in an interview Paul said he wanted to make something more playful with crafts that you don't have to be a technician to put together, he definitely succeeded.
The magazine publishes 4 times a year (soon to be 6) and their pictures are truly inspirational and the recipes easy to follow, please try some out!


Click here to read and download the magazine,

and here to view the blog.

Cant wait to try out this centrepiece                                                             

Black and stars

Lucky me has another story in the Italian Vogue Bambini!

 In their latest December issue is a story by photographer Igor Borisov and stylist Kate van der Hage in which I did the hair and makeup.

For the shoot I made lots of hair accessories with silver stars; little clips, big crowns

 and small hair pieces.

The pictures look very festive in an understated way, hope you like them.

Its time to play the music

The Muppets are like a London bus stop, you wait hours for your bus to arrive only for 3 to show up at the same time! So it is with the Muppets, for years nothing new came out of the Muppet factory until now, later this month the new Muppet movie is released in the States and across Europe in February.

I cant wait till its time to play the music and light the lights!

The Muppet movie trailer is looking very promising..

And not only that they also released a new album, The Green Album, all the classic Muppet songs recorded by bands like OK go, Weezer and the Fray.

And if you think this is enough to fulfill all you Muppet needs, be warned there is more!

OPI just launched a Muppet inspired nail polish collection. All the tones are based on some of your favourite characters. There is Divine swine and Excuse moi for Miss Piggy, the Fresh frog of Bel Air for Kermit, Meep Meep for Beeker and Wocka Wocka for Fuzzy Bear.

Click here for a link to the OPI site and click on the Muppet photo to see the full range.

I love the sparkling polishes and am dying to try them out. Who doesn't want a bit of Kermit on their nails! :)

My favourite must be the super sparkling multi coloured, rainbow connection polish, but oh my this little jar is hard to find!! It was sold out on almost all webshops. After browsing the net for an hour I found some available on Ebay so I would say this is your best bet if you want to buy some. Or if you want to do the old fashioned going into a shop way ;) most big warehouses stock OPI, they don't always have the full range though so maybe call ahead.

I also ordered the Devine swine, a sparkly purple and Designer..the better, a silver polish with bronze particles. 

There is a very good video on Youtube by goldystarling witch shows you all the different colours,

click here to view.





Speculaas

Now the winter has truly started, am shivering in my freezing cold house as I write this, there is only one cookie to bake: Speculaas. This traditional Dutch shortbread biscuit has everything you need in a winter cookie, its spiced, crispy and the smell of them baking in the oven is to dye for.
Over the years I tried a couple of recipes but settled on this one as my favourite. It uses koekkruiden/ cookie spices that you can buy in any supermarket in Holland. If you don't have this lurking around in your cupboard try mixing ground cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger and pepper.

Ingredient:
200 grams of all purpose flour
half a tea spoon of baking powder
100 grams of brown sugar
pinch of salt
3 tea spoons of koekkruiden or 2 teaspoons of cinnamon/ half a teaspoon of nutmeg/ half a tea spoon of clove/ pinch of ginger/pinch of pepper
2 spoons of milk
150 grams of cold butter
Almond pieces for decoration

Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, spices and salt and sift.
Add the milk and the butter and mix the dough into a ball, be careful that the dough stays cool, its best to mix it with a electric mixer.
Cover with clingfilm and let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 170 C and roll out the dough till its half a cm thick.
Use what ever cookie cutter you like, place a piece of almond in the middle of your cookie.
Bake for 20 minutes. Make sure they don't over bake, keep an eye on them for the last 5 minutes.
I like to take them out when they look just slightly under baked.
They taste even better after one day!


Enjoy!!

A fishy tail

pictures from my portfolio

I love doing a fish tail plaid, its a very easy way to make your hair look more fashionable.

 Make them big and messy for an editorial look or neat and fine if you want to channel Pocahontas.

Every time I do a fish tail braid on a photo shoot models or mums of mini models say: 'I wish I could do that to my own hair, can you show me how?'

So right on time for the party season here a fish tail plaid tutorial!

and once more for the student in the back

now its time to texturize

Even dinosaur got into the spirit and asked for a make over

Website of the week

I love the They draw&cook website where you find an amazing collection of illustrated recipes.
www.theydrawandcook.com
Started by a brother,Nate, and sister, Sally, design team. They came up with the draw and cook idea while on a family vacation. Nate was trying to recreate a favorite dish - fettuccine with figs in a balsamic butter sauce - while Salli sat at the counter with her watercolors painting the crate of figs. This led them to realize how fun it was to illustrate food. They started talking about creating a little recipe book for friends, family, and clients.  Asking some of their artist pals to help, but never got enough recipes to justify printing a book, so Nate built a quick blog and Salli started to spread the word - it spread fast! They Draw & Cook now contains the biggest and best collection of illustrated recipes anywhere.

Besides recipes they also have amazing city drawings on their, They draw and travel website. www.theydrawandtravel.com
Have a look on their world map here to find a illustration of a town near you!

Backstage video

Have a look at this video from the FHM December issue cover shoot.

You can see me do the hair and makeup of Made in Chelsea's Millie.

click here

 

New discovery

I had never heared of DHC, a Japanese cosmetics company, until I got send a couple of products last week .
DHC is an online and mail order company that has fused its Japanese heritage and ancient beauty secrets together with the natural benefits of olive oil, the foundation of the skincare range.
The company has been around for more then 30 years, who knew. 
It will take some convincing to get my of my Shu Uemura cleansing oil, but their olive based products feel very nice. My favourite so far are the Olive Virgin Oil swabs, individual packed cotton buds drenched in nurturing olive oil. You can use them around delicate areas like your eyes and ears and are great for conditioning your cuticles. These little swabs are also amazing for cleaning up little makeup mishaps, smeared mascara for example. As they are individually wrapped they are very handy to have in your bag for you never know when.

Follow this link to order them from the DHC website

To eat or not to eat...

I've done the makeup and hair on this recent Harrods magazine shoot by photographer Laura Hart.

The shoot was based on the marshmallow test, a video you probably have seen on You Tube.

The marshmallow test, or deferred gratification test, was originally done in the 1960's by professor Walter Mischel of the Stanford university. He studied a group of four-year-old children, each of whom was given one marshmallow, but promised two on condition that he or she wait twenty minutes, before eating the first marshmallow. The university researchers then studied the developmental progress of each participant child into adolescence, and reported that children able to delay wait were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable persons.
The children who took the sweet straight away turned into teenagers who lacked self-esteem and experienced difficult relations with their peers, it was found. Those who waited for a second marshmallow turned out to be more socially competent, self-assertive and academically successful.
The boys and girls who waited even scored an average of 210 points more in their school exams than those who didn't.

Interesting hey?

How to do: Natural makeup

A while ago I did the makeup and hair for this shoot with photographer Jonny Mallen and model Josephine. The look for the shoot was very pretty and natural, something that will suit you for an everyday makeup. Time for a tutorial I think!

• 1.Always make sure your skin is clean and well moisturized before you apply any makeup. For a daytime makeup make sure your moisturizer contains a SPF, even in this grey autumn weather there are still harmful UV rays in the sky.

2.Start by applying your tinted moisturizer. A little dap on the cheeks, chin and nose will do (see picture). Work this in to the skin with a gentle tapping motion, you don't want to rub to hard and rub all your makeup of your face.

3. Apply a bit of under eye concealer, under-you guessed it- your eyes. These concealers have light reflecting particles and help lift bags, making your eyes look fresher.

4. If your skin is oily or you a prone to shine, dap your skin with a bit of loose powder, concentrating on your Tzone

5. Now its time for a bit of colour, I use 3 blushers. A bronzing tone to shape the cheekbone and to give you a bit of colour. I peach tone to give colour to the apple of your cheek and a highlighter for on your cheekbone to accentuate their shape and to give your face a little lift.

6. Curl your eyelashes with an eyelash curler, these really are a essential in your natural makeup kit. Curlers make your lashes look longer and your eyes look bigger, a win win situation!

Always make sure you use your curlers on clean lashes, left over mascara can stick to the curlers and pull your lashes out, ouch!

 Apply your mascara of choice, for a clean look I like to do just the top lashes. On this picture I also applied a thin line of cream eyeliner, use a little brush and draw the line as close to your lashes as possible.

7. Softly fill in your eyebrows to give them a nice,full, arch shape. I like eyebrow pencils but you can use a powder as well. Just make sure you keep them nice and light, don't go darker then your hair colour. For a how-to look at my post on eyebrows from last year click here

8. Apply a bit of colour on the lips, or a bit of gloss or Vaseline, whatever tickles your fancy.

And there you go, a clean, fresh, beautiful face! With a bit of practise you can do these 8 steps within 3 minutes!!